This week we collected 126 stories on ArtsJournal. Here's what I learned: The Venice Biennale, one of the visual arts world's most important events, opened Saturday in complete disarray. The EU pulled its funding. Earlier in the week the jury resigned over which countries should be eligible. The Golden Lion — the coveted grand prize — was scrapped for a people's choice vote. The US pavilion … [Read more...]
So Just How Big is the Culture Audience? (comparisons that may make you rethink)
A few months ago I attended a virtual convening of non-profit arts leaders from across America gathering to discuss the arts model and how it might be strengthened. I wondered why we were just talking among the non-profit arts sector, when it seems to me the commercial creative industry, though bigger, is facing many of the same issues. And that led me to wondering about the comparative size of … [Read more...]
AJ Chronicles: Are Our Attention Spans Killing Culture or Reassembling It?
This week we collected 138 stories on ArtsJournal [subscribe]. Here's what I learned: Cultural historian Joseph Horowitz published an alarm this week — part of a transcript of a conversation he had with conductor Thomas Fortner about whether classical music can survive a collective collapse of attention. He writes: "The idea of listening to bits and pieces, sampling a performance, sampling a … [Read more...]
Just How Big is the Culture Economy?
[see Part II of this - comparing the audience for culture.] This week we picked a story from the Wall Street Journal about the Vegas Sphere, which by all accounts delivers a spectacular experience. The project was built for $2.3 billion, about a billion dollars over budget, and completed in 2023. The Sphere has been a remarkable success, now the highest-grossing arena in the world —"$379 … [Read more...]
AJ Chronicles: Perils of Philanthropy — The Metropolitan Opera
We collected 118 stories on ArtsJournal [subscribe] this week. Here's what I learned. The detail that stuck out in the Metropolitan Opera's announcement last fall that it had made a $200 million deal with the Saudi government to take the company to perform in the Kingdom for three weeks every winter was not the eye-popping rental fee. Nor even the fact it was taking up residence in the Middle … [Read more...]
LACMA’s New Building: What’s the purpose of art in a Museum?
The LA County Museum of Art has always been a museum on its own terms. Housed in what felt like a ramshackle architectural hodgepodge of period buildings built around an outdoor plaza, its fascinating collections belied the setting. Instead of the stone palaces with imposing grand entrances housing the treasures of its East Coast and European museum counterparts, LACMA felt messy, disjointed... … [Read more...]
AJ Chronicles: This Week — Perils of the Algorithmic Culture
This week we collected 134 stories on ArtsJournal.com. [subscribe] Here's what I learned: The whether-AI-can-make-art debate is by now a well-worn trope. It's actually a tedious question. If we still haven't been able to come up with a definitive answer to the age-old college dorm room question "what is art" then how are we supposed to be able to judge whether AI can make it? A small study … [Read more...]
AJ Chronicles: How to Fight the Slop
This week we collected 128 stories on ArtsJournal. Here's what I learned: We are drowning in slop. That's essentially the diagnosis in Derek Thompson's sharp essay this week on what he calls "zombie flow," the algorithmic compulsion to produce vast quantities of content nobody particularly wants. Streaming platforms commissioning shows designed not to be great but to fill a queue. Studios … [Read more...]
From Messages to Conversations: AI Agents are Changing how we Find Culture
In the last six months, we've seen a surge in traffic at ArtsJournal. That's great, right? But when I looked at server logs, we found that 70 percent of that surge was machines —bots— not people. We aren't alone. According to recent reports, automated traffic hit 51 percent of global web activity in December 2025, the first time in a decade that machines outnumbered people online. AI and large … [Read more...]
AJ Chronicles: The Excellence Problem and Why it Matters
This week we collected 113 stories on ArtsJournal. Here's what I learned: Next month, the French-Canadian harpsichordist Jean Rondeau will perform the Goldberg Variations three different ways in a single concert: solo keyboard in the traditional manner; arranged for strings, flute, and continuo; and a third approach he hasn't yet revealed. In an interview with Bachtrack this week, he was asked: … [Read more...]